Urbin Report

Friday, August 31, 2007

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group that he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles.

“I think Americans are actually willing to sacrifice,” Edwards said Tuesday during a forum held by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. “One of the things they should be asked to do is drive more fuel efficient vehicles.”

The former North Carolina senator was asked specifically if he would tell them to give up their SUVs, he said, “Yes.”

Wait, it gets better!

Edwards was asked during his appearance how he explained the contradiction of asking Americans to sacrifice while he’s living in a 28,000-square-foot (2,600-square-meter) mansion.

He said he came from nothing, worked hard all his life, has always supported workers and fought big corporations as a lawyer.

“I have no apologies whatsoever for what I’ve done with my life,” he said to loud cheers

Surging exports and business spending propelled U.S. growth to the fastest pace in more than a year before turmoil in the credit markets forced the Federal Reserve to warn of a bleaker outlook.

Gross domestic product rose at a 4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said in Washington, up from an initial estimate of 3.4 percent. The median forecast of economists polled by Bloomberg News was 4.1 percent.

...

The Fed's preferred inflation measure, which is tied to consumer spending and strips out food and energy costs, rose at a 1.3 percent annual rate. The pace of increase was the slowest in four years.

I took a graduate Macro Economics course last spring term (and the book was written by a Clinton economist), so I have an even better understanding of how damn good those numbers are.

As one of my liberal friends used to say when yet another Clinton Scandal cropped up in the 90s, "Just look at your 401K and shut up." Needless to say, I didn't pay much attention to that advice.

Now the Bush administration has economic numbers Billy Jeff Clinton would have had Janet Reno kill another 100 American citizens for. He's not taking his own advice and is still yammering the far left party line. That's ok, its a free country, and I respect the First Amendment. So keep barking up that tree big guy.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I was recently discussing flooring with someone and they mentioned that bamboo is renewable and should be used instead of hardwood flooring. I asked if they were away that Maple flooring did actually grow on trees?

The Wall Street Journal has noticed a strange correlation between the donations of a major contributor to Hillary Clinton and a family living in a modest Daly City, California home. Despite having an annual income that would likely qualify as John Edwards' other America, the Paw family has contributed over $45,000 to Hillary's electoral campaigns -- on the same days as mega-donor Norman Hsu, who once lived at the same address...So far, the Journal has not shown any wrongdoing, but the implication is pretty clear. Hsu pledged to raise over $100,000 to the Hillary campaign, and he may have used the Paws as a front for his money -- or money from someone else. The Paws do not have the kind of money from the single salary as a postal carrier to donate $47,500, unless one thinks that a working-class family in a Frisco suburb would spend that money getting Hillary elected rather than fixing their house or preparing for their retirement.

The Journal does some digging on the Paws, perhaps a little too much for comfort for privacy activists. They just refinanced their home for $270,000, which indicates that they didn't have $47,500 just laying around. Yet even with their modest 1300-square-foot house mortgaged to the hilt, the residence qualifies as one of Hillary's top five donor addresses for this election cycle.

One of Hillary Clinton's major fundraisers turns out to also be a major felon on the run. Yesterday, connections to Norman Hsu turned up in a Wall Street Journal investigation into large donations from a family of modest means at Hsu's old address. Today, the Los Angeles Times reports that Hsu lammed it after agreeing to serve a three-year stretch for grand theft.

Yes, the French have collectively grown a pair in at least one matter.Accord to Reuters, who probably sees this as a "bad thing",

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday a diplomatic push by the world's powers to rein in Tehran's nuclear program was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."...Sarkozy said a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable and that major powers should continue their policy of incrementally increasing sanctions against Tehran while being open to talks if Iran suspended nuclear activities.

"This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," he said, adding that it was the worst crisis currently facing the world.

"Have you noticed how we don't hear much about Bush-haters? It's odd since not long ago "Clinton-hatred" was a national epidemic.... [T]he most outrageous accusations against Bush are commonplace on the left and in liberal circles today, but we don't get articles in the mainstream press ridiculing 'Bushophobia.'" - Jonah Goldberg

Old tolerance; allowing others a differing point of view.New "Liberal" tolerance; declaring certain views tolerant and others not, then refusing to allow certain views to be stated because one has already declared them intolerant (normally without making any attempt to understand them).

"Bruce Campbell is to crazy cool as Chuck Norris is to roundhouse kicks"

"Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy." -- John Derbyshire

"At the heart of every liberal program lies the idea that we are entitled to something just because we have a heartbeat. Liberals tell us that we are entitled to these things not because we've earned them, worked for them, or sacrificed for them; we are entitled to them because we have a pulse. ... Like the grasshopper in Aesop's fable, liberals believe that the government owes them a living. It exists to meet their every need, regardless of their own efforts, or lack thereof." -- Rich Hailey

"You know, a huge drain on California's economy is the illegal immigrants. We need to close the borders." -- Larry Flynt, Hustler publisher and CA democrat gubernatorial candidate

"Well, if I use Hispanic culture I get corruption and really good salsa music. If I use Chinese culture I get rigid thinking and decent Szechwan. If I use Islamic culture I get...not damned much of anything. And ditto for Africa although at least the rhythm is good and you can dance to it. But if I use Western European Culture I get industry, higher standards of living, longer lifespans and a generally "happier" society. Damn, I think I'll just have to go with WesternCiv even if I do have to put up with the Lutherans." -- John Ringo

"Political Correctness is inverted McCarthyism." -- Dennis Miller

"[moveon.org] is about lies and a distortion of history." -- Simon Wiesenthal Center

Monday, August 27, 2007

Or to put a bit more bluntly, they have to to LIE in order to promote their agenda.Today's example, former congresscritter from Colorado, uber-liberal democrat Pat Schroeder used results from a single poll to make the following statement,

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple of slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes.' It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes,' on every page."

SF Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders did actual real reporting and examined the poll the hard far left extremist Schroeder referenced. The results she found make the liberal democrat pat Schroeder either to have a severe reading comprehension problem, or is a flat out liar.

Maybe you shouldn't pay any attention to me. According to Schroeder, as a conservative, I've got a bumper sticker for brains. Silly me, I looked into the poll - which liberals have hailed as proof of their intellectual superiority - and there's not a lot there in "the whole picture." The poll found that among people polled who read at least one book in the last year, liberals read nine books and conservatives read eight.

When I called Michael Gross, associate vice president of Ipsos public affairs, to find out more about the Ipsos poll, he told me the one-book difference "is within the margin of error, it's not a statistically significant difference."...Then again, because the poll did not ask people if they read newspapers or magazines, Gross noted, "I don't think it says anything about people's general level of information."

Then there's the quality issue. A person could read nine romance novels in a year and qualify as Aristotelian by Schroeder's logic....In her rush to brand the right as bunch of illiterates, Schroeder had the poor sense to go after an avid reader, Karl Rove, who has been winning a heated competition with President Bush as to which of the two can read the most books. Rove recently told Rush Limbaugh that he beat Bush last year. The Score: Rove, 110 books; Bush, 94.

Once again, it becomes clear that the far left extremists have to actively avoid the truth (i.e. they have to lie) in order to promote their agenda.

The Huffington Post published a plea to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs today to arrest George Bush for "conduct unbecoming" -- essentially, a military coup against the elected government of the United States. Martin Lewis claims that the military can arrest a President while not conducting a coup d'etat by focusing only on his role as Commander in Chief of the military:

General Pace - you have the power to fulfill your responsibility to protect the troops under your command. Indeed you have an obligation to do so.

You can relieve the President of his command.

Not of his Presidency. But of his military role as Commander-In-Chief. ...

In addition to relieving him of his command as Commander-In-Chief, you also have authority to place the President under MILITARY arrest.

Lewis quotes extensively from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but clearly his scholarship does not extend to the Constitution. The command of the armed forces follows from the president's election to office, and cannot be separated from the office itself. Bush isn't C-in-C because he got appointed to that position, but because the American electorate voted him into that role. In other words, the military cannot arrest the C-in-C but leave the President in power, and to argue otherwise is to demonstrate complete ignorance.

Secondly, the President does not serve at the pleasure of the Joint Chiefs -- and indeed, the military is subservient to the civilian command structure. They do not have arrest authority over the President -- nor over anyone else in the US other than military personnel, as the Posse Comitatus Act stipulates. Civilian oversight keeps the military from seizing power and is a long and vital tradition in this nation. It's what keeps us from becoming a banana republic, run by military strongmen.

Lewis wants to turn America into just that kind of nation. His Bush-hatred runs so deep that he would willingly see the military take control over the federal government just to get rid of him. The Left likes to talk about supposed fascism among conservatives, but the Huffington Post is literally calling for a military coup to reverse an election, not only an un-Constitutional act but also the kind of authoritarian rule they supposedly despise.

Things like the Constitution don't matter to the so-called "progressive" left. It is all about the raw, naked lust for power.

Following the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, in which seventeen people were killed by a man armed with two 9mm pistols, Britain passed a law outlawing the ownership of most handguns, despite researchers finding "no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession." It's a law so severe that the Britain's Olympic shooting team is forced to train abroad, lest one of its members try to shoot up a grammar school. So how effective has the law been? A doubling in gun-related crimes since the ban, naturally.

Isn't it amazing that the same people that lambaste every single thing the government does and blames events like 9/11, Katrina and anthrax on the government are the same ones calling for national healthcare. They scream about Walter Reed and then ask for the same care. The government can't do anything right, why would you want them handling your healthcare? Welfare recipients get about 24 CENTS on the dollar. 76 CENTS per dollar on administrative costs?! And you want them managing your health?

Meanwhile, the same Congress that has immunized itself from much of the law is also responsible for the ever-expanding federal criminal code, which we can thank for our shamefully enormous and still-soaring prison population, which is by far and away the largest in the world.

You have lawmakers who feel they're above the law. And who at the same time are criminalizing anything and everything they find tacky, repugnant, or immoral.

Forgive the lofty language, but you know what? This isn't healthy for our republic.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The question was raised asking which Republican candidate would do a "good job" defending the Second (and Fourth) Amendment. The clear answer is that just about any of them would do better job then any of the democrats running (with the possible exception of Bill Richardson).

With Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards you can kiss the 2nd, 4th, and 10th Amendments good bye.Same for Obama, it would just take longer.

HRC is a socialist attempting to wear a moderates skin. She will shed that skin as soon as she (Heaven forbid) wins the election and will actively use the power of the executive branch in very heavy handed manner to drag this country into the pit of socialism while destroying the economy with putative taxes against the working middle class while the uber-rich who donate to her work the loopholes to pay 1/3 the tax rate they should.

Harvard University’s endowment earned a 23.0 percent return during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007. With FY07 being one of the best performance years since the inception of Harvard Management Company in 1974, the overall value of the University’s endowment grew to $34.9 billion. . . . The endowment stood at $29.2 billion on June 30, 2006.

Mr. Reynolds comments: "Obviously, this obscene wealth should be subjected to windfall profits taxes."Obviously, Harvard is doing well under the Bush Economy.

"Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters nationwide favor cutting off federal funds for 'sanctuary cities' that offer protection to illegal immigrants. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 29% are opposed. . . . By a 56% to 31% margin, voters want the government to continue building a fence along the Mexican border." It'll be interesting to see how both parties approach this.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Monday, August 13, 2007

I was driving a rental car the other day with Satellite Radio. So I took the opportunity to listen to Err America. I haven't been able to listen to that far left extremist train wreck since they were pulled from the Boston area AM station that carried them so they could broadcast a profitable format.

There were two topics the host hit on. One, goods made in China are not made to US Health Standards. This has been obvious to anyone paying attention for years, but the loopy left is just catching on.

The second topic was Err America's support for that attack on the First Amendment known as the so called "Fairness Doctrine." In case you haven't heard of it, it is federal regulation of what can and can not be said, about politics, on privately owned AM radio stations. It would have the federal government creating a law that regulates what kind political speech can be made on public airwaves, by privately owned radio stations. A bit of history here, AM radio was nearly put out of business by FM. The medium was saved by Talk Radio, in particular conservative Talk Radio. The liberal MSM had a strong lock on print and television, there was no FM talk to speak of, but AM airtime was available at a low cost compared to FM, print or TV. Conservative Talk Radio has been successful because it is popular. A lot of people want to listen to it. That results in advertisers spending money. There have been attempts at left wing talk radio on the AM bandwidth, but it has failed almost every time. Err America couldn't even make a profit in the oh so Blue Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

Err America supports to attack on the First Amendment for several reasons. First off, they do not own any actual radio stations. They just try to sell content to the people who invested in the capital of broadcast stations and federal licenses. This attack on the First Amendment wouldn't force Err America to broadcast any opposing views, it only effects the people who actually own the stations. It would force the owners to drop profitable Conservative Talk Radio air time in order to broadcast unprofitable far left extremist programming, which is what Err America produces. They view this as a double win for them. It would force profitable programming that they don't agree with off the air and give them "free" access to markets they couldn't compete in under the open (and Fair) market. If the loss of profitable programming drove the station bankrupt, this would still be a win for Err America, since they would have silenced their political foes.

Such behavior from liberals is appalling. It is entirely expected from so called "progressives", who are actually Communists who don't want to be admit they are Communists.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Remember the 200 -300 civilians that were allegedly killed by a U.S. airstrike against top Taliban leaders? The Taliban claimed that what the U.S. really bombed was a busy market. Upon hearing claims of heavy civilian casualties, NATO investigated. Number of actual civilians killed: ZERO.

It's not so much that the Taliban makes these claims that bothers me, it's that the Western press actually reports them.

Another corruptDemocrat: "What West Virginia lacks in jobs, population, and reasons to live there, it more than makes up for in receipt of loads of government money. So who can blame Rep. Alan Mollohan for unethically steering millions of dollars to his “poverty-ridden district” (and, uh, to his own personal poverty-ridden bank account)? Turns out lots of people can blame him for this, including the FBI, and now the House Rules Committee. Mollohan rather hurriedly asked last night that all his earmarks be stripped from the Agriculture appropriations bill, because the Republicans were about to point out that he was still funneling money to the shady nonprofits he set up with former aides and business partners.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Hillary has all of the marks of your Leftist dictator: the unquenchable thirst for more and more power, the paranoia, the greed, the narcissism, the naked hatred of her opponents, the unflinching willingness to go to any length to destroy people who stand in her way, the arrogance to believe that her way is the only way and that she can completely change 40,000 years of human nature in a few, short years.

Friday, August 03, 2007

They just replayed the whole mess from the House last night on C-Span. I spoke to Novak and he doesn't remember anything quite like this happening before. Pretty outrageous, really. It is about as blatant an abuse of power as you can have in a legislative body, to cheat on a vote total....The vote total was 215-213 in favor of the Republican motion to recommit. At that moment, Rep. Mike McNulty ( D-N.Y.), who was in the Speaker's chair, gavelled out the vote, thinking that it was a tie and the motion had failed. But he had miscounted — the motion had actually passed. The Democrats were only able to change this by cheating and changing more votes after the gavel.

Although they did not do so for hours, the House clerk's office finally did put a record of the vote online this morning, with the measure failing by a vote of 216-212....Also, as the aide quoted on The Corner earlier today points out, the Democrats used this creative vote-counting in order to preserve and expand new welfare services for illegal immigrants. Republicans don't have too many issues going for them right now, so this might be a good one to keep alive.

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." - Thomas Jefferson

"Imagine how a Teddy Kennedy or a Bill Clinton would take the news that one woman in ten, say, has the power to resist his blandishments by deadly force, and you'll get a perfect idea of how a Charles Schumer or a George Bush feels about armed taxpayers." -- L. Neil Smith

"I preume there are far too many abortions performed in this country. And I also believe that at the end of the day, as much as I might disapprove, none of them are really any of my business." -- Dennis Miller

"This is Academia, dear. We only preach Freedom of Speech, not practice it." - Non Sequitur

"All that Communism needs to make it successful is someone to feed and clothe it." -- Columbia Record

"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level." -- Norman Mailer

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The [Elian] raid... was almost worth it, if only to watch Jesse Jackson...defending an armed pre-dawn raid by the US government on a minority household." -- Rich Galen

"I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes to Imperialism, he catches it in a very acute form." -- Winston Churchill, 1903

The ACLU gave Nancy Pelosi a 93% rating last year, People for the American Way, 94%. Her Americans for Democratic Action rating was 100% and her lifetime American Conservative Union voting record is 2%. Now that is far left.

"I'm older than many of you, and actually lived in a commune during the hippie era. There is nothing like living in a commune to give you an industrial-strength understanding of the limits of "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Not all the leeches are invertebrates." -- from a post to the venusenvycomic Yahoo Group, Feb. 2, 2003

Hello, my name is Noam and I have the answer to all your problems. It's all the fault of the evil Americans, the bad conservative ones that fill the airwaves with their lies and are in power and want to oppress the world. There. Now give me money so that I can soothsay again and assuage your guilt." -- John Ringo

The American Civil Liberties Union that argues a 13-year-old girl ought to be able to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge now tells us that a 17-year-old high school junior is too delicate to take a phone call from a military recruiter without mom or dad explicitly signing off.

"Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong." -- Dennis Miller

"Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good." -- Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003)

"The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and time again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club." -- Dave Barry

"...A college student was arrested Sunday in the slashing of 42 tires on 13 government vehicles in an Army recruiting office parking lot, saying he was angry about the war in Iraq, authorities said.

Following a number of calls about a man wearing black and slashing tires, two deputies stopped a 19-year-old college student from Colorado as he tried to run from the lot shortly after midnight Sunday, a Kitsap County sheriff's office report said.

The man put up his hands, dropped a knife and, after being made to lie on the ground and being read his rights, asked, "Is this the time where I can confess?" deputies wrote.

On a portable breath test, his blood alcohol level registered .168, more than twice the legal threshold for intoxication, according to the report.

He told deputies he decided to slash the tires of Army recruiting vehicles because he "hated the military and the government and the war we were in."

He was jailed for investigation of first-degree malicious mischief, a dangerous-weapon violation for the knife and being a minor in possession of alcohol, with bail set at $10,000..."